As the political wrangling and emotive reporting of the Baby P case dies down, social care managers will be left to pick through new government policy announcements and inquiry recommendations.
Lord Laming, whose 2003 report into the death of Victoria Climbié laid the foundation for childcare reform, has been asked to look at progress towards his recommendations, while children's minister Ed Balls has ordered an investigation into the Baby P case.
Reaction on policy has also been rapid. A week after the court case concluded, Balls announced new legislation to ensure that all local authorities set up multi-agency children's trusts, despite a damning report by the Audit Commission that found trusts spend too much time on structures and process and demonstrate little evidence of improvements for children and young people.
Trusts were part of the government's response to Lord Laming's first report, which found that professionals from different backgrounds were not working together when they suspected child abuse and that accountability was unclear. Five years later, these problems can still persist.
Professionals have stepped up to defend trusts. Children's minister Beverley Hughes said trusts have improved since the Audit Commission's report, while Maggie Atkinson, the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, says there has been misunderstanding of the role of trusts.
But there is a mixed picture. Some schools say they don't see the need for children's trusts and see them as a threat to their status. Some teachers and social workers have also found it difficult to overcome cultural barriers and differences in their working institutions.
Another of Lord Laming's 2003 findings, incorporated in the green paper Every Child Matters, was the need for information sharing between professional groups. This challenge remains.
In its serious case review into Baby P's death, published in November, Haringey Council found there had been good communication across its teams, but also noted "weaknesses in specific areas of information flow".
Since 2002, pilots of information sharing have run at nine authorities around the country. The aim is to enable professionals to log in and identify what services a child is accessing and which other professionals they may need to contact.
A 2005 report into these "trailblazers" found a "cultural shift" towards sharing information more effectively was a prerequisite for a successful electronic index. The support of senior managers in children's services is also vital if the system is to benefit children.
On the back of these trailblazers, a national information sharing system had been due to go live before the end of January 2009. But the £224m ContactPoint system was already delayed last year, and in September it was put back again because of technical problems.
Multiple delays, coupled with data security worries, make it difficult for managers or users to have faith in the system. Success with ContactPoint could also be hampered by a general weariness with IT systems. A report by Lancaster University into the integrated children's system, used for performance management, showed the system was onerous to use and could take up 80% of a social worker's day.
The government was keen to act quickly to reassure the public. But there is now considerable concern about the barriers that still remain in providing good quality care for children, underlined by last month's Ofsted report.
Balls has asked Lord Laming to review specific actions needed to overcome these barriers.
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
